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Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-41914

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Friday, 14 November 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 1 December 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on (a) the levels of uptake of the winter flu vaccine and (b) whether there is a significant risk of death as a result of a lack of vaccination.

Question reference: S6W-41921

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Friday, 14 November 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 1 December 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether the pilot gull management for the city of Inverness, announced by the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity in his ministerial statement on 1 October 2025, has now been finalised, and, if not, what progress has been made since the statement was made, and whether the pilot will be in place and ready to be implemented prior to the commencement of seagull breeding season in 2026.

Question reference: S6W-41919

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Friday, 14 November 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 1 December 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the data on the uptake of vaccinations provided by NHS Highland teams and not GPs, whether GPs will be provided with immediate access to said data at the time of administering a vaccine, and, if not, by what means they will be able to know whether their patients have been vaccinated.

Question reference: S6W-41922

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Friday, 14 November 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 1 December 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether NatureScot has completed its work to develop a co-ordinated gull management plan with local authorities, as announced by the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity in his ministerial statement on 1 October 2025, and, if not, when this work will be completed.

Question reference: S6O-05145

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Wednesday, 05 November 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 November 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will request that the Auditor General conducts an investigation into the ScotWind offshore wind leasing round, in light of the finding in the Future Economy Scotland report, Rethinking ScotWind: Maximising Scotland’s offshore wind potential, that, on a per megawatt basis, a comparable leasing round in England and Wales is projected to raise up to 40 times more than the £755 million raised in one-off fees in Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-40556

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Friday, 19 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 30 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has carried out any risk assessments, regarding any potential environmental and financial impact in Scotland, of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Ministry of Defence civil defence nuclear cooperation programme and any proposals to transfer defence nuclear liabilities, including Vulcan, into the civil sector in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has not carried out any formal risk assessment regarding Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and Ministry of Defence (MOD) civil defence co-operation and the proposal to transfer any defence liabilities to the civil sector as no formal proposal to transfer any such liabilities has been presented to us.

We are aware of technical work being conducted by NDA and MOD to evaluate the potential transfer of the Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment, near to Caithness, to the NDA when the site reaches the end of its operational life, not expected to be before April 2027, and we will consider the results of this in due course. Under the terms of the Energy Act 2004 any proposal to give the NDA additional responsibilities, including defence liabilities, in Scotland requires agreement from Scottish Ministers and a Designation Direction under the Energy Act 2004 would require to be to be laid in the Scottish Parliament.

Any transfer of Vulcan to the NDA would also require the relevant authorisation under the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 issued by SEPA and so would be subject to robust independent scrutiny.

Question reference: S6W-40559

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Friday, 19 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 30 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding any potential environmental impact in Scotland, whether it will propose the scheduling of time for a parliamentary debate on the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s draft strategy and any proposals to transfer major defence nuclear liabilities, including Vulcan, into the civil nuclear sector in Scotland, in light of the concerns expressed in the Parliament on 11 March 2014 by the then Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment regarding a culture of secrecy at the Ministry of Defence and Vulcan.

The NDAs are currently updating their 5 year strategy to cover the period 2026 to 2031. This is a routine exercise and so we do not intend to propose a parliamentary debate on this issue.

We will consider the requirement for a parliamentary debate on any proposals to transfer major nuclear defence liabilities, including the potential transfer of the Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment, near to Caithness, to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) if and when any such formal proposal is received.

Question reference: S6W-40558

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Friday, 19 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 30 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding any potential environmental impact in Scotland, whether it (a) can give and (b) has given the (i) Ministry of Defence and (ii) Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) any mandate to transfer defence nuclear liabilities, including Vulcan, into the civil sector in Scotland.

A) Under the terms of the Energy Act 2004 any proposal to give the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) additional responsibilities in Scotland, including defence liabilities, requires agreement from Scottish Ministers and a Designation Direction under the Energy Act 2004 would require to be laid at the Scottish Parliament.

B) Scottish Ministers have not agreed any transfer of defence liabilities in Scotland from the Ministry of Defence to the NDA as no formal proposal to transfer any such liabilities has been presented to us.

Question reference: S6W-40557

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Friday, 19 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 30 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding any potential environmental impact in Scotland, whether its ministers have been informed of, endorsed or approved any Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Ministry of Defence memoranda of understanding and associated business cases relating to proposals on nuclear liability transfers.

Scottish Government has been informed of a memorandum of understanding and initial business case between the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and Ministry of Defence (MOD) to carry out technical work to evaluate the potential transfer of the Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment, near to Caithness, from the MOD to the NDA when the site reaches the end of its operational life. As this relates to initial work to consider the viability of a potential transfer, Scottish Ministers are not required to endorse or approve this.

Under the terms of the Energy Act 2004 any proposal to give the NDA additional responsibilities, including any defence liabilities, in Scotland requires agreement from Scottish Ministers and a Designation Direction under the Energy Act 2004 would require to be laid at the Scottish Parliament so Scottish Ministers agreement would be required for any transfer. We expect that Vulcan will continue operations until at least April 2027.

Question reference: S6W-40531

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Independent
Date lodged: Monday, 15 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 25 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what recent analysis it has carried out of the expenditure of its non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs); what savings have been identified; whether such reviews of NDPBs are currently ongoing and, if so, in what areas it considers saving of a substantial amount might be achieved.

In November 2024, the Scottish Government published a report on public bodies expenditure for 2022-23 (Public bodies expenditure: aggregated data for 2022-23 - gov.scot). The data was supplied by public bodies and indicates that total resource expenditure by public bodies was over £23 billion to deliver a huge range of services, including in Health, Education and Justice. Of this, public bodies spent almost £1.3 billion on running their corporate functions and another £2.3 billion was spent by those corporate functions. Public bodies passed through funding of over £7.6 billion to other organisations, including third and public sector organisations as well as private individuals. An additional £800 million was spent on the Scottish Government's own total operating costs.

This data has been used as a basis to set the savings target in the Public Service Reform (PSR) Strategy to reduce annualised Scottish Government and public body corporate costs by £1 billion over the next five years, representing around 20% of the identified public body corporate and core government operating costs.

We have a range of programmes to improve services that are saving money from corporate expenditure, including the Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework, Single Scottish Estate, National Collaborative Procurement, Commercial Value for Money and digital programmes, which are securing cost avoiding and cash releasing savings. We will continue to collect data to enable identification of further opportunities for cost reductions through the removal of duplication and increased efficiency in service delivery.